Marshmallow-Only Lucky Charms Are Here, And You Can Win A Box

If you ever dreamed, as a child, of a marshmallow-only box of Lucky Charms, that dream may be about to come true. Now that General Mills is done removing artificial colors and flavors, the cereal giant has decided to finally dispense with the fiction that anyone cares about oat pieces and produced boxes of Lucky Charms Marshmallows. The catch? They’ve made just 10 boxes, and the only way to get your hands on one is to win a sweepstakes.

Lucky Charms has always been about the marshmallows, but you couldn’t ever get to the good stuff without digging through a sea of boring oat pieces. Sure, the oat pieces were eventually coated in sugar, when initial sales fell flat, but they still weren’t marshmallows.

In fact, the very first Lucky Charms commercial told the truth about the cereal. It was then, and still is, basically a rejiggered version of Cheerios with tiny marshmallows added to make it interesting.

Later versions of the cereal continued to emphasize the marshmallows, with new shapes being added throughout the years. In 1991, the cereal featured a “marshmallow within a marshmallow” with the star and balloon shapes being temporarily combined.

In another combined marshmallow, General Mills put a key inside a door shape that would dissolve on contact with milk.

Although the marshmallow lineup changed a lot as the decades passed, one thing remained more or less constant: the boring oats that nobody really cared about. Sure, you could go out and buy an oats-free knockoff, as reported by Consumerist, but that wasn’t really the same.

Now General Mills has finally ditched the oat pieces, and for some reason Biz Markie is along for the ride.

“Have you ever poured a bowl and wished that it could be free of all the oats, marshmallow only,” Biz Markie sings to the tune of his hit “Just a Friend.” “Then today’s your lucky day, your wish just came true. Oh snap! Ten boxes, maybe one’s for you!”

The combination of Biz Markie and Lucky Charms is confusing, but that’s fine. The important part of Biz Markie’s marshmallow-only jingle is that, for some reason, General Mills decided to only make 10 boxes of Lucky Charms Marshmallows.

That’s right. Marshmallow-only Lucky Charms is a thing that actually exists in the world, but you probably won’t ever get to see it outside the psychedelic Biz Markie video embedded above.

What does Biz Markie have to do with Lucky Charms Marshmallows? Oh, snap! [Credit: YouTube]

Time reports that if you want to get your hands on a box of marshmallow-only Lucky Charms, you’ll have to enter a General Mills sweepstakes before October, 18. And to do that, you’ll have to snap a selfie of yourself holding an imaginary box. Presumably, this is so that General Mills can plaster you all over social media. Maybe you’ll be holding nothing, or maybe you’ll be photoshopped into holding a box of Lucky Charms Marshmallows. Nobody knows!

According to the fine print, General Mills can do whatever they want with your selfie after you send it in.

“In addition, and although Sponsor is under no obligation to re-post or feature your Entry, you hereby grant permission for the Entry to be featured on Lucky Charms social media sites, and within other promotions and/or advertisements without prior approval, consent or compensation to you or any third party and within any time frame.”

Unfortunately, snapping a selfie and posting it to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with the hashtag #Lucky10Sweepstakes is the only way to get your hands on a box of Lucky Charms Marshmallows.

Also according to the fine print, General Mills pegs the approximate retail value (ARV) of each prize at $50. How did they come to that figure, though? That’s pretty steep for a box of cereal, marshmallow-only or not. But as a collector’s item, if this is truly the only way to ever obtain a box of oats-free Lucky Charms, wouldn’t that seem a little on the cheap side?

We won’t know for sure until one of the prizes lands on eBay, which seems like something that will probably happen.

Unless Biz Markie is in will-work-for-cereal mode, this seems like a lot of expense and effort for a product that doesn't really exist. [Credit: YouTube]

Of course, this also seems like a tremendous amount of effort to go through for a one off. It may generate a lot of attention, but if they’re generating attention for a product that doesn’t actually exist, then what’s the point?

Do you think that this is really it for Lucky Charms Marshmallows, or could we see an actual product on grocery store shelves sometime in the future?